


Say It With Steak

by Whatclaptrap



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, F/M, Gen, Mad Science, Not half as cracky as it sounds like it is, Original Character(s), This is how I'm coping with COVID, Yes the restaurant AU nobody wanted nor asked for, everything is weird, join me on this flaming train and please love me, molecular gastronomy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23538955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whatclaptrap/pseuds/Whatclaptrap
Summary: The Lair is the best molecular gastronomy restaurant in Metro City.  Metro City just won't acknowledge it yet.The restaurant AU nobody asked for - the boys are still aliens, there is still mad science, Metro City continues to endure the brainbots.  It's just that the brainbots are doing food delivery now, and there's a fondue gun, and Roxanne is going to have to write a lot of columns on weird food trends.
Relationships: Megamind/Roxanne Ritchi
Comments: 67
Kudos: 120





	1. Options

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my dear darling hopeful-friends. I honestly don't know what I'm doing. At this point I will file this fic squarely under the Compulsion tag. I don't know where it's going, I'm throwing in OC's from my original superhero fiction in as set dressing, and by gosh golly I sure hope you'll enjoy this beautiful flaming train wreck with me!

The problem with Metro City was that nobody had any  _ imagination. _

Obviously, yes, of  _ course _ you could go down to any old restaurant in town and grab a burger and fries. Sure, it would be delicious. But would it be  _ exciting?  _ Would the experience be  _ transcendental?  _ Do you really think you could walk into Joe’s Chowder Shack and get the soup of the day and have it be a wholly unique flavor and textural experience?  _ No _ ! It would just be Soup Of The Day, Probably Made Out Of Leftovers From Soup Of Yesterday, etc etc. 

It just. Wasn’t.  _ Fair.  _ Because everybody thought Joe’s Chowder Shack was great. Wonderful, even. Nobody  _ cared _ that their soup tastes tinny like it came out of a can, that the soup was always perfect temperature because it was warmed in a  _ microwave  _ and it never got  _ truly hot _ . Nobody cared that Burgerbarn had never actually changed out the oil in their fryer, they thought it was a  _ unique taste.  _ Unique! Like fried potatoes were  _ supposed _ to taste like they’d gone rancid six years ago! 

Meanwhile his restaurant, the Lair, got regularly panned by every food critic and foodie in town. Oh,  _ sure,  _ there were long wait times. It was a two man group, just him and Minion, after all. And  _ yes _ there had been the thing with the laser-engraved flank steak that had ended with the fire department being called. And the brainbots weren’t the best delivery people - they got nippy, sometimes, when they didn’t get the tip they thought they deserved. And  _ maybe _ it wasn’t  _ great _ that they’d been through six locations, and the only place left that was willing to rent to him was a literal abandoned warehouse. All the online reviews were terrible, unless they mentioned the baked goods, which,  _ fair,  _ because Minion handled the dessert menu and Minion’s desserts were always unfailingly delicious. 

But still. He’d only set the mayor’s wife on fire  _ once, _ and really, she shouldn’t have been standing so close to the business end of the fondue gun. 

And meanwhile Metro Man, the  _ Scott’s _ restaurant, was showered with praise. All the time! Every review was great! Five stars! (Excluding the ones he’d posted, the ones that had very quickly been marked as spam and hidden, because the world was  _ not _ fair.) And of  _ course _ every location was plastered with posters of Wayne Scott -  _ why wouldn’t they be, _ him with his stupid perfect hair. Of course,  _ they _ got  _ great  _ reviews when they ran their Valentines laser engraved steak promotion -  _ SAY IT WITH STEAK  _ \- even though Wayne was laser engraving every single steak with his  _ eyes _ , and there had to be  _ something _ unsanitary about that. He was starting to think, too, that they were buying reviews. The number of times that KMCP sent Roxanne Ritchi to review Metro Man’s new tasting menu, ridiculous! 

No. Metro City had no imagination. Metro city would rather languish in the same old flavors they’d always known, ignoring his genius, like they always had. Really, he was starting to wonder why the hell he’d ever gotten into the restaurant business to begin with. 

(Well, no, he was always exquisitely aware of the  _ why _ , because the  _ why  _ was constantly televised. And that same reason would come in every other Sunday, because, well - he wasn’t really sure why, maybe because this particular reason had been keeping an eye on him for  _ years _ now to make sure he didn’t go too far off to the deep end.) 

(There had been a few close calls that ended up with him in time out back in the Prison for the Criminally Gifted. But what restaurant worth its salt  _ didn’t _ have an ex-con in the kitchen?) 

But that would all change. He’d  _ make _ it change. He’d get a good review if it took kidnapping Roxanne Ritchi six thousand times to make it happen. If the Metro Man restaurant could get a five star review on their veal oscar from Ms. Ritchi when she didn’t even  _ like asparagus  _ \- he knows, it was her prime complaint when she reviewed the Lair’s soup spheres, she’d been positively scathing about the asparagus soup - he was  _ sure _ he could come up with something that would knock her adorable socks off. 

After all, they didn’t call him Megamind for nothing. 

—

When he’d came to the earth, obviously, it had been a bit of a hard time. 

It’s not easy for a eight day old infant when you’re the last of your kind. You’re barely starting out! The whole world in front of you! And it  _ doesn’t _ help when your pod gets knocked off course by that jerk from the Glaupunk quadrant, it  _ doesn’t _ help when you get knocked into the local penitentiary instead of living the life that you should. But fate plays favorites, as everyone knows. 

Really, the warden hadn’t known he was in the prison until he orchestrated his first prison break at the ripe old age of one. That’s the thing about being in a prison for the criminally  _ gifted _ \- the criminals are, well, gifted. By all accounts, his uncles shouldn’t have gotten away with hiding him for an entire year, but somehow they managed. Probably with a lot of bribery. And then, with another fell swoop of fate, he was torn away from his uncles and the only home he’d known that hadn’t been unceremoniously sucked into a black hole.

The warden did his best, tried to give him a real name and raise him like a real kid. It lasted for all of a month. Megamind had already latched onto the the name  _ Megamind _ . It was all his uncles had called him, proud of his accomplishments, proud of the fact he was learning - well,  _ criminally _ fast. When he refused, as a very precocious two year old, to answer to anything else, the warden had given up. Megamind it was, always with Minion, and they both pitched a royal fit when the warden tried to keep Minion in a fishtank. Really, it wasn’t even  _ close _ to the right pH level. Nothing was, on earth, exactly. 

It went on. Grade school was hell on earth. He probably shouldn’t have recognized Wayne Scott on sight, considering the last time he’d seen Wayne was when he was eight days old, and given the way Wayne looked at him on the first day of school, he was pretty sure Wayne didn’t remember the crash landing and stealing Megamind’s place. But he did remember Wayne Scott. Gods, he’d never forget that awful perfect  _ hair _ . 

It was bad. Very bad. Nothing he tried ever seemed to go  _ right _ , and school was so different from his uncles - his remarkably supportive prison uncles, who always praised his inventions, even when they blew up and made a mess. No, in  _ school _ , you were expected to sit and regurgitate facts and not innovate at all. And when you did innovate, it only led to panicked screams and time in the corner once the flames had been put out. 

_ ‘It’s okay, sir,’ _ Minion would say, bumping his ball against Megamind’s ankle as he stared at the knot in the wood in the corner that looked like a screaming ghost, ‘ _ Uncle Rohit would have liked the sound of the boom, and I know uncle Tony would’ve liked the blue flames!’  _

Ah, fantastic precious Minion. Minion always tried to cheer him up. The only good thing in little Megamind’s life. 

He really  _ was _ right on course to going bad. Really, really bad. It was what he was best at, after all. He planned for a week how he was going to go out; if the other kids hated him for being weird and making things and being blue, then fine! He’d turn  _ them _ blue. See how they liked it! 

It was the week that he was going to put his plan into action that things changed. 

See, the Lil’ Gifted School was run by the Scotts. Of course it was. He was a child, but he wasn’t stupid; even then, uncle Angelo had taught him about following the money. The Scotts put together the school for their precious little Wayne; Megamind was just window dressing, something close enough to  _ gifted _ that he’d ‘fit in’. But the thing was, that meant the Scotts could get the best of the best for show and tell, and that week, they got a special visitor at the Lil’ Gifted School. 

They got Cannon Dan, the resident hero and protector of Metro City, to come give a talk. 

In retrospect it was pretty clear that the Scotts were trying to steer Wayne into being a hero. Why  _ else _ would you drag a renowned superhero to talk to a class of barely fifteen kids? But Cannon Dan, he stuck around for the whole school day, and when Megamind and Wayne got into a fight during recess, it wasn’t the teacher who intervened - no, it was Cannon Dan, peeling Wayne off of Megamind like both of them were no stronger than kittens. 

“In opposite corners! Both of you!” Cannon Dan snarled, and Megamind  _ would’ve _ just taken it as a punishment, but he’d never actually seen anybody put Wayne Scott in a corner before. 

“But he  _ started _ it--” Wayne started, voice whiny, and it looked, just for a minute, like he was about to bust out his laser vision in a fit of frustration. But Cannon Dan just glowered at him from behind the red plexi visor of his face shield. 

“ _ Corner _ , Wayne! Even super kids get time out!” 

It was the  _ only _ time that Megamind ever saw Wayne stuck in a corner, and he kept glancing over his shoulder, watching as Wayne scowled at the wall and snorfled back tears.  _ Nobody _ told Wayne Scott to sit in a corner. Nobody, apparently, except Cannon Dan. 

“He’s  _ cool _ ,” he told Minion as they filed back onto the prison bus, back to his rooms in the Prison for the Criminally Gifted. He said it quietly, barely more than a whisper, because the last thing he needed was for anybody to hear the bad kid say a hero was cool. He especially didn’t want it getting back to his uncles. 

But Cannon Dan put  _ Wayne Scott  _ in a  _ corner _ , and he’d made sure Wayne  _ stayed _ in the corner for the  _ full time out _ . That leaves an impression on a kid. 

Cannon Dan showed up a lot more in the next few weeks. Whenever there wasn’t a fight with the Galactic Wraith, anyways. When Megamind got TV privileges, he watched those fights on rerun - Galactic Wraith always had the best costumes, the best style, the best  _ plans _ , and he’d watched her even before Cannon Dan had showed up at school. But now he watched Cannon Dan, too, because he never expected a hero to help him. 

And he definitely wasn’t supposed to hear it when Cannon Dan came to talk to the warden. It made sense; supposedly, if Cannon Dan could ever  _ catch _ her, they’d have to have a place for the Wraith to be imprisoned. That was actually why Megamind and Minion were out and about - he’d put Minion in the tin can suit, and they were both playing hide-and-sneak-past-the-guards to go look at the wing under construction, the one that was supposed to house her. There was a lot of fascinating tech in the new wing (and some really dumb mistakes waiting to happen, which Megamind could have told them, but they never  _ asked _ him his opinion on tech stuff, and if he was caught building things the warden would always confiscate his inventions and lock them in evidence). 

“ _ Jesus, _ Wilson, he’s a  _ kid _ , not a prisoner,” Cannon Dan says, as Megamind and Minion crouch outside of the warden’s office, the door open just a crack. It’s just enough for Megamind to see Cannon Dan pinch the bridge of his nose, barely holding back frustration. 

“He’s a disaster waiting to happen,” the warden grumbles, his voice filled with a heavy sort of exhaustion. “It’s a dehydration gun now, in two years it’ll be a death ray -” 

“ _ A kid _ ,” Cannon Dan says again, cutting off the warden. “A really smart kid who’s gonna resent you acting like you already know which way he’s gonna go. Maybe stop treating him like an inmate and start acting like a fuckin’ parent.”

And maybe the fact that it’s coming from a hero and not from one of his uncles is what makes it feel more real. It’s nice, feeling like there’s an adult out there that doesn’t immediately think Wayne Scott is the golden child, that maybe Megamind is worth something too. 

Megamind still goes through with the paint bomb, though. 

But he doesn’t get expelled. Even though, probably, he should have. The teacher grimaces, completely blue - and she stays stained blue for weeks, everyone does - and she continues on with the lesson with Megamind in the corner. He doesn’t get kicked out. And Cannon Dan keeps checking in. 

Not just on him. On Wayne, too. Because of  _ course _ Megamind and Wayne stay in the same class, there was nowhere else for them to go. 

It’s after a big fight with the Wraith,  _ the _ big fight - she disappears for a while, and Cannon Dan ends up in the hospital, and Wayne and Megamind are both around twelve in earth years. Cannon Dan comes back to the school a few months down the line, his arm still in a sling, and he sits and sighs and stares at their small class. 

“Don’t be a hero, kids,” he says, as the teacher gasps and covers her mouth. It’s obviously not what he’s supposed to say, but he looks exhausted, and his visor’s on a little crooked, and the cast looks uncomfortable. “Not like me. There’s better ways. You can do better. Be better. Feed people, or something. All us big guys do is cause property damage and destroy shit.” 

And that - the fact that he swears in front of the whole class, and the fact that the teacher rushes to end his speech - that’s what really drives it home. He glances at Wayne, because he knows that’s the track that Wayne was on - the same answer he gave every time somebody asked,  _ I’m gonna be a hero! _ The absolute polar last thing that Megamind expects is for Wayne to glance back at him, this weird unreadable expression on his stupid perfect face, his eyebrows all twisted up like he’s thinking and it hurts. 

Of course it’d hurt, he thinks to himself. Wayne Scott has never had a thought in his life, it’s too new, his brain’s not accustomed to it yet. 

But beneath that, Megamind is pretty sure he’s just seen Wayne Scott give up on being a superhero. 

And Megamind? Well. He glances down to Minion. Minion glances up, arching a brow ridge, his fins flicking uncertainly. Their glance is a little more fraught with meaning. They’ve known each other forever, obviously it’s going to be more. 

The glance from Minion is clear.  _ Is that it, sir? Are we going to do something else?  _

Megamind’s glance is equally clear.  _ I don’t know. I didn’t know we had  _ options _.  _

“Maybe I’ll learn to cook,” Wayne mutters, mostly to himself. “Mama and papa have restaurants…” 

Restaurants, of  _ course _ the Scotts have restaurants. For a moment Megamind is so disgusted that he doesn’t even want to make fun of Wayne -  _ Mama? Papa? Really?! -  _ and then the idea ignites as bright as magnesium flame. 

Wayne wants to learn to cook, huh? 

Well. Well well  _ well _ . As if somebody like him could understand the chemical chain reactions that cooking  _ required _ ! Like Wayne Scott even understands the Maillard reaction, or amino acids, or capsaicinoids - which Megamind has an intimate understanding of, having pepper sprayed himself more than once while testing ideas for anti-anti-riot gear. Once more Megamind glances to Minion, and that fantastic fish already has an adorable evil grin, fangs out, like he’s just had the same thought. 

That’s it. That’s  _ it.  _ His evil plan just needs some pivoting, that’s all. 

Wayne Scott wants to learn to cook in mommy and daddy’s fancy restaurants?  _ Fine! _ Megamind will learn better -  _ be _ better! He’ll make the best food science can brew! He’ll be the best chef that Metro City has ever  _ seen _ , and nobody will stand in his way. 


	2. Beats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha HA I was wondering why people thought this was a one-chapter thing, and then I realized I forgot to check the 'this is a multi chapter story' box. WHOOPS, my bad. Thank you all for reviewing, I love you. 
> 
> I still don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but the train's still rollin', and it's still got a ways to go. 
> 
> Also I cracked myself up imagining brainbots pretending to be traffic lights so there's that.

Roxanne Ritchi wanted to be a reporter for a long, long time. 

She’d decided on it when she was in high school. Admittedly, when she decided it in high school, it was at least partially to annoy her mother, who wouldn’t stop asking her frustrating life questions.  _ What do you want in life, Roxanne? How are you going to make it in the world? What’s your backup plan? _

Maybe it was a little too idealistic, but plans A, B and C were all the same; make it as a reporter in Metro City. She never bothered with plans D through Z. 

And, yes, it was probably influenced by the reporters who constantly ended up at the front lines, doing live broadcasts as Cannon Dan fought the Galactic Wraith or some other two bit villain that faded from notoriety as soon as they were beaten. The flash and the glory and the  _ excitingness _ of it all blinded her for a bit. It wasn’t until she went to college that she got over the star spangled idealism and got a little bit more into the grit of it, when she read stories about the broadcasters who blew the whistle on injustice, the reporters who dug up dirt on corrupt politicians, who chased the backstories of influential people and got them.  _ Those _ people became her idols. 

Then she finally tried getting into the field. 

She was good, sure. Landed an internship part way through college, did a few relatively big interviews, got a steady gig at one paper. Then she clawed her way from papers to television, fact-checking stories before they went on the air. It was great. It wasn’t what she  _ wanted _ , exactly, but it was somewhere under the umbrella of her degree, at least. 

Then Angela Delgado, the food and business liaison for KMCP, went down for the count. Turns out she had a coconut allergy, which she found out after doing a review on a vegan bakery whose buttercream frosting was made with - you guessed it - coconut oil. It wasn’t pretty, and Roxanne was the only one available to cover on such short notice. 

She didn’t  _ mean _ to take over the beat, not really; Angela loved her stories, really got invested in drawing attention to small mom and pop stores that needed the revenue. But with Angela out recovering, it was suddenly  _ Roxanne’s _ job to canvas neighborhoods,  _ Roxanne’s _ job to get stories on the new restaurants popping up, the flow of business, the growth of new things in the city. She loves it because it’s new and interesting, but she feels guilty, too; especially when Angela’s old contacts give her cards and pictures and flowers to deliver. 

She ends up going to Angela’s house to drop it all off - and it’s not just cards and flowers, the last person she’d spoken to had actually given her a casserole to lug along - and Angela, still puffy-eyed and tired-looking, just grins and shakes her head. 

“I watched that last piece, about the food truck, Thai Me Up? You did good,” she says, and the smile seems genuine even if she still looks a little bit like hell. “It’s okay. Keep the beat. After this, I really don’t want to do food reviews anymore anyways.” 

So that’s how Roxanne ends up being the new food and business liaison. She learns a lot about the city. She’d already known plenty; she knew her home neighborhoods very well, and her mom was her best informant there, because her mom was a huge gossip. But with this beat, these businesses, the outreach makes her stretch. 

It ends up giving her lots of places to visit; after doing stories on each location, she cycles her breakfasts between the little cafe called Bakeside - so named because it sat on a little hill with an extremely nice view of the lake - Beansmithy for its coffee, and a place literally called The Place that had the best omelettes in town by far. One of her favorites has been Momo Madness, a little place that rents out a basement location in the university district and serves Nepali food. Their best sellers are the eponymous dumplings, and Roxanne can gorge herself on nothing but momos for days. ZuruZuru swiftly became her go-to ramen joint in the city, though after the story she did about the family who owned the place went live, she usually has to get takeout - it’s packed every night. There’s a lot of good that comes out of it, even if it’s not what she thought she’d be doing. 

And then, of course, there’s the two restaurants that swiftly become the bane of Roxanne’s existence. 

Angela had done stories on both of them before. Two restaurants, both run by aliens, which was weird enough as it was. One was run by the Scott family (yes, the Metro City Scotts,  _ those _ Scotts, everybody was  _ so impressed _ ). Classic fine dining, steaks that start at $80 and go up, cloth napkins and waiters that remember you by name, and an honestly disturbing number of posters devoted to their superpowered son. 

The other was… well, the other was the Lair. 

The Lair had been through six different locations across Metro City since its inception. Roxanne knows. She did the research. The original location had only been a block away from the Metro Man restaurant. That lease had ended when something went wrong with an experimental pressure cooker and the Lair blew a structurally superfluous new doorway between the kitchen and the dining area. The second location hadn’t been big enough, and the equipment the owners had shoved into the space cluttered it up so much they could only sit three tables at a time. That lasted until they tried to match the Scott’s hokey Valentine’s deal with the laser engraved flank steak - every truck in the fire district had come to watch the flames be put out. 

The next two leases ended as normally as they could for a restaurant that made spherical soup and had the decor of a supervillain biker bar that exclusively played AC/DC - they got the boot in under a year. In between, Megamind - the primary owner - disappeared for three months with no explanation. Roxanne was pretty sure she was the only one to turn up the prison record, which didn’t exactly shock her; she didn’t write about it, mostly because what kitchen  _ didn’t _ have an ex-con in it somewhere? It wasn’t news. 

The fifth location was where the fondue gun incident occurred - why, exactly, the mayor thought the Lair was a good idea for a dinner date, no one would ever know. 

Which brought them to the sixth and final location of the Lair - it was an old warehouse in the industrial district, covered in graffiti and absolutely massive. Out of the way of foot traffic, it didn’t get a whole lot of attention, and the building was far too big compared to the dining area; Roxanne had the feeling the rest of the space was used for something nefarious, but she could never prove it. She never got a chance to wander around unattended. Whenever she went to review the Lair, she was always surrounded by the waiters/security guards/delivery drones. 

“ _ Brainbots _ , Ms. Ritchi,” Megamind had told her once, with an air of aloof annoyance. “They are _ brainbots.”  _

Both of these restaurants were terrible for different reasons. 

She played nice with the Scott family, for sure. Really, she even kind of liked Wayne - when he wasn’t around other people, anyways. He  _ could _ be normal, but he was so used to showboating that as soon as another human entered the scene it was all suave grins and laser eye tricks and that super uncomfortable thing that he did where he would hover a handful of inches above the ground. The Scott family was worse. Lord Scott never seemed to look up from his paper or his phone or his pager (the man still had a pager! Who still used a pager?!), and Lady Scott would always fix Roxanne with that fake smile and ask about all the  _ nice little coffee dates you and my son go on, dear _ . Roxanne never had the heart to tell Lady Scott that the coffee dates weren’t  _ dates _ , and honestly, as long as Hal thought she was dating somebody, he got marginally less creepy. 

The Lair, on the other hand... Well, it was the Lair. It was run by a guy who called himself Megamind, for heaven’s sake. And while Roxanne liked Minion - He’d always been kind, and the first time she’d come in to the Lair he’d made her sit down and list out any allergens or food sensitivities she had so that he could be sure to avoid them - Megamind was a different subject  _ entirely _ . 

Megamind was a jackass. 

And, well, he wasn’t a  _ harmful _ jackass, or not an intentionally harmful one, anyways, but he was kind of a jackass nonetheless. She’d thought so ever since she heard about the fondue gun. I mean, come on. A  _ fondue gun? _ The whole  _ point _ of fondue was to dip things  _ into  _ cheese, not to fling molten hot cheese at things like silly string. 

It was always a production at the Lair. Literally,  _ always _ . Sometimes, Roxanne just wanted to do a review of the food. Oh, sure, it was funny whenever something went wrong; the time that Megamind’s cape got stuck in the flash freezer and froze solid?  _ Hilarious _ . He shouldn’t even be wearing a cape in a kitchen anyways. When Minion tried to unfreeze it with the torch array that was overkill to have in  _ any _ kitchen?  _ Also _ hilarious, at least until all the brainbots hovering around went into  _ grease fire mode _ and filled the entire restaurant with extinguishing foam. Hal had screamed - a lot - and thrown the camera at the nearest brainbot. The footage had all been lost. 

She considered - more than once - trying to order takeout and review _ that _ , instead, but then the weird little delivery robots would know where she  _ lived _ , and she wasn’t sure she wanted that to happen. Who  _ knows _ what information they tracked. 

The worst part about the Metro Man restaurant and the Lair was that they  _ fought _ over her. 

Yes, she probably wasn’t supposed to know. But when you’re a reporter you know how to track your sources, and the number of times that the Scotts had sent free meal tickets asking for her  _ specifically  _ to come down and review their new dishes? Ridiculous. And the Lair was  _ worse.  _ Have you ever been directed to a restaurant by a set of brainbots trying to cosplay as traffic lights and construction barriers? Roxanne has. Multiple times. When Hal was driving the news van, it was a given they’d end up at the Lair - he was crap at noticing robots until it was too late and they were already parked. 

That wasn’t even getting into the other shenanigans. There was the food truck incident, for one. She hadn’t even been working that day; it was a rare day off, and she’d been exploring one of Metro City’s farmer’s markets. At the time she’d been trying to stealth date this guy named Bernard, and they’d gotten coffee and were searching for some kind of breakfast. She had actively screamed when a window opened up in the empty air next to her and Megamind popped out of what seemed to be nothing. 

“Miss Ritchi! Care to try the invisible truck’s new  _ OH my god it’s HOT _ \--” 

She’d reflexively thrown her coffee cup at his giant blue head. It ended that line of questioning pretty quickly.  _ Why _ he thought an invisible food truck was a good idea, she had no clue. Admittedly, she would have reviewed it if it had ever shown up again. 

(Maybe it had, and she’d just never seen it.)

Then there had been the Metro City food festival. Wayne had complained about it for weeks before it actually happened; his family had bought out half a block and constructed a replica of the Metro Man dining room. 

“They don’t  _ get _ it, Roxie, they have never been to a food festival in their lives! They’ve just done  _ market research _ .” Wayne had been distraught. And it hadn’t even mattered - Megamind and Minion crashed the entire food festival with a sea of brainbots in bowties serving up dehydrated small plates. 

Which would have, maybe, been interesting if the ratios hadn’t been off. Roxanne was there to hear it - she was one of the first people that Megamind pulled off the street to try this new weird thing - and she was standing there with the blue cube in her hand when Minion pulled Megamind aside and whispered something urgently. 

“What do you  _ mean _ you forgot the decimal?!” It wasn’t more than a half second before Megamind leapt back across the room and smacked the dehydrated food cube out of Roxanne’s hands. And then the brainbots had swarmed, recalling all of the dehydrated snacks they’d passed out by force, and Wayne heard it from down the block and thought it was some kind of attack. He’d grabbed Roxanne and whisked her away with his super speed. Eventually Cannon Dan had shown up to clean up the mess, and when the Lair’s experimental food was rehydrated, it was three times the amount it should’ve been. 

At least after things were rehydrated, everyone who’d attended the event got sent home with a takeout box and the food festival had been called a wash. 

(It was very Lair-style, but Roxanne had to admit that once rehydrated, the vegetable glass noodles, shaved protein matrix and spherized truffle sauce was actually pretty good, if generally  _ weird _ .)

All in all, though, Roxanne felt like she was tolerating it well. Even with Metro Man and the Lair pencilled in to her schedule almost  _ weekly _ , she got a chance to go out and review other places. It didn’t completely destroy her work schedule. Her segments got pretty good ratings, and there was no shortage of places she could do stories or follow-ups on. She wasn’t the face of KMCP 80, but she was fine with that - Bart Spacey had been the face of KMCP reporting in the early 90’s, and he’d never really been the same after that time that the Wraith had used him as a human shield and he’d nearly died. 

Roxanne didn’t end up with trauma. Even with two competing alien-run restaurants fighting over her review times, which was saying something. She ended up with more food than she knew what to do with, and she put a  _ lot _ of time in at her apartment complex’s gym because of it, and any time the news station was planning a corporate party the event planning staff would hound her day and night for her opinions, but it wasn’t bad. 

She was okay with where she was. Happy, even. Sometimes she wished she was higher up, that her segments didn’t get cut for bigger stories. Sometimes she wished she was like her college idols, chasing big news, shedding light on injustices perpetuated by the system. But she found comfort in bringing attention to the little guy, the businesses that people overlooked. She was still doing something, at least, even if it was smaller than what she wanted. 

And then one day Kyle Acres from life and entertainment visits her at her desk, grinning like the story-stealing jerk he was. 

“Hey Roxie,” he says, and she might want to throw her coffee cup at him the longer he draws out that stupid nickname, but she doesn’t, which is great. “I heard Cannon Dan goes to that Lair place every other Sunday. You’re over there a lot - do you know when he goes? I was thinking about pencilling in a story about it, if I can nab an interview.” 

Roxanne forces her broadcast smile at that.  _ Everybody _ wants to interview Cannon Dan. He stopped giving person to person interviews after the big one, when the Wraith vanished. “Sorry, Kyle, I have no idea. I really don’t make it out to the Lair that often.” 

“Aw, bummer. Too bad. I was thinking we could double team it.” Kyle gives a heavy sigh and a shrug. “Where’s your partner in crime? He checked the wide angle lens out and Toby was looking for it.” 

“Hal’s off today,” Roxanne says, almost aggressively proud of how fine she sounds. Again, Kyle shrugs, and he wanders off. She checks her email, writes a couple one line responses back to her contacts. She goes to get coffee from the break room. She staples something together, then realizes they’re two separate assignments that aren’t related, and then she has to dig for her staple remover. 

The thing Kyle said about Cannon Dan sticks in her head. 

Minion and Megamind had tried getting her to the Lair a number of ways. Free food fliers. Traffic light brainbots. Once she’d even been lightly kidnapped - a brainbot hopped into the news van when Hal was getting snacks from the gas station and had taken her for a ride. But now that Kyle had said something, she couldn’t recall a single time they’d tried to get her to the Lair on a Sunday. 

Not like they had their schedule up anywhere, but she’d kind of assumed they were closed Sundays. 

“Crap,” she mutters to herself, the curiosity nipping at the back of her brain. It’s not going to leave her alone until she does something about it. 

Looks like she’s going to see if the Lair serves Sunday brunch. 


	3. The citadel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am posting this on my lunch break (*cries in essential worker*) on my phone so I’m sorry if the formatting is janky. I also apologize for the shortness of this chapter. The shortness will likely be remedied in the next bit. Ok love u bye

The protein is misbehaving. 

Megamind has been trying to create a better, longer-lasting foam for  _ ages _ . Soup spheres were so last year - he was getting sick of them, and really, it was  _ boring _ . The spherification process was too easy, and no matter how exciting he tried to make it, people assumed he used a kit or something. As though he  _ needed _ a kit. All you needed was a liquid with the right pH, alginate, and a nice calcium chloride bath. Easy! Disgustingly easy, really, and yes, he’d made it harder for himself - large spheres wanted to go flat and not spherical at all, so he’d had to make the chemical reaction  _ better _ , and suspending things inside the spheres was a little more difficult, and for the very acidic things he’d needed to come up with an entirely new way of doing things, because alginate didn’t work like that, but then he’d invented an experimental food coating and he couldn’t serve that to humans--

Anyways. Foam.  _ Foam _ was interesting now. At least it was when the proteins denatured  _ correctly _ . Right now they were not, and Megamind was deeply considering setting the whole thing on fire just because. Fire was another fun chemical reaction. There was always time for fire. 

“Sir?”

Megamind jerks up, nearly banging his head on the brainbot that had been floating just above him. That was Minion’s I’ve-called-you-three-times-already-and-you’re- _ still _ -not-responding tone of voice. He spins around in his chair and immediately miscalculates, pushing himself a little too hard, and he has to slam his hands on the edge of the desk before he spun a full 360 and ended up facing the foam failure again. 

“Yes, Minion?” 

Minion is hovering in the doorway, his robotic hands clutched in the air in front of him. There’s a sickly sort of glow to his bioluminescence, and the minute flicker of his chromatophores make it very clear he’s nervous. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but--did you… have you looked at the security feeds?” 

That makes Megamind twist a brow. “Why would I look at the security feeds?” He spins back around in his chair. “It’s Sunday.  _ Nobody _ comes here on a Sunday.” 

Minion sighs. “ _ Some  _ people show up on sundays, sir, come on. You know that.” 

Megamind waves a hand in the air, dismissing it immediately. Sundays are dead. That’s why they’re the best experimenting days. His brain is already banging away at different things he could try - the insta-fermenter has been on the back burner for a while, today might be the day to break it out of the vault. “Yes, yes, but you know what Dan eats, you can handle it.” 

“ _ Sir.”  _ Ah, now it’s Minion’s  _ you’re-being-obstinate  _ voice. “Oh, just—Slash, can you stream the security feed like a good brainbot?”

Slash - the brainbot that has been so helpfully hovering for no reason -  _ bowg _ s its assent and pops out its projection array. It spits out the projection on the wall, which plays a little awkwardly over the bits of idea cloud tacked up on the flat surface. 

The view is right in front of the Lair, focused on the largely empty parking lot.  _ Largely _ empty because there’s a car there, one that he expected - the old beat up red volkswagen beetle that Megamind recognizes as Cannon Dan’s, and, really, the hero might be a creature of habit but he could at least replace  _ that _ . There’s a flicker of movement further out, near the turnout onto the street - a car driving away, and  _ that  _ isn’t that odd, maybe somebody had just gotten lost and used the parking lot to turn around-- 

And then, like it snaps into focus, he catches sight of the problem. The reason that Minion had interrupted him in the first place. He rockets out of his chair so fast that the wheels can’t keep up and the whole thing keels over with a clatter as he slams his hands onto the desk. 

“ _ Why is Roxanne Ritchi here?!”  _

She’s just.  _ Standing _ there, in the parking lot, talking to Cannon Dan. Perfectly photogenic like she  _ always _ is, but right now there’s no cameras, and the news van isn’t there, and neither is her awful little camera goblin man. She is there, in the parking lot, and she is talking to Cannon Dan. 

“That’s what I was trying to tell you, sir--” Minion starts, and Megamind is half listening, but he’s already whirling around to head for the door. Which would have been a lot more graceful if he didn’t immediately trip over the chair he’d just knocked over. 

Minion reaches out just as Megamind hits the floor but it’s not the first time he’s tripped over something, and by evil gods, it won’t be the last; he pops up before Minion can lay a single caring robotic finger on him. “I don’t understand. Did we send out a flyer? Are we having a deal? Did I have a plan I forgot about?” 

“No, I checked, we haven’t mailed anything out,” Minion says. As Megamind darts out the door, Minion follows. 

“A holiday, then!” Megamind shouts over his shoulder, and then he stops dead, so quickly that Minion’s joints screech as he tries to keep from bowling Megamind over. “Minion, where is my cape?” 

“The kitchen cape?” 

“ _ No,  _ not the kitchen cape! Why would I need the kitchen cape?” 

“I don’t understand why you need a cape in the first place—“ Minion starts. 

“ _ Because Ms. Ritchi is here,”  _ Megamind growls back, and he ignores the way that Minion rolls his eyes as he wheels back around and heads for his room. The  _ last _ thing he needs is for her to see him on a day like today. A - a lazy day of invention! That’s not interesting, or intriguing, or devilishly handsome. At least this time his experimentations hadn’t exploded yet. He wasn’t covered in seaweed goo or stained by experimental new food dyes. It could have been worse. “Do we still have the salted egg yolks?” 

“At least six dozen,” Minion says as he follows. There’s the metallic click as Minion taps his fingertips together, nervous. “But sir, maybe  _ this _ time we don’t need to try the breakfast ravioli--” 

Ugh. The breakfast ravioli. Megamind has to suppress a shudder. The breakfast ravioli that they’d launched a year ago to combat Metro Man’s limited time classic brunch menu had not fared very well. But that was  _ last year’s _ recipe. And, yes, the breakfast ravioli had been shelved. That doesn’t mean that Megamind can’t come up with something on the fly. 

“Nonsense! This isn’t just  _ Cannon Dan _ we’re dealing with - whatever Ms. Ritchi has planned, we can’t afford not to impress!” 

“I mean, I really think we could--” Minion starts. Megamind spins around just long enough to give Minion a dull glower, and with another grand roll of his eyes, Minion assents. “Okay, all right, sir. What do you need prepped?” 

Megamind whips back around, darting into the door to his room. There are three brainbots floating aimlessly, one of them halfheartedly trying to organize the closet, and he whistles, drawing their attention. “I need the blackfang cloak, stat!” 

They  _ bowg _ and rush into the closet, nearly knocking their braincases together as they do. Only then does Megamind respond to Minion’s question. 

“We’re going to try the flaming breakfast citadel.” 

“You want to try the  _ citadel?”  _ Minion gasps. “Sir, the structural integrity is just not there, we talked about this--” 

“Yes, yes, I know, the sausage, I understand, but we’re going to  _ make _ it work.” Megamind steps into his room, spreading his arms as the brainbots come rushing back out with the cape. They sling the mantle over his shoulders and the smallest one starts playing with the collar, primping it so it sits tall and intimidating. “I’m going to need the dough printer up and running. Fill it with pancake batter.” 

“Savory or sweet?” Minion asks, and then, with a narrowing of his little fishy eyes, “Just how tall are you making this citadel?” 

“As tall as science allows!” Megamind jams an emphatic finger in the air, and just as quick yanks his hand back when the smallest brainbot tries to zip in for a nip. “Savory, then sweet. Let’s do both!”

“Alright, sir…pancake printer, and I’ll get the bacon knitter going,” Minion says, and despite it all there’s a little bit of a gleam in his eye, now. He clicks his fingers together, then perks up. “Ooh! What about the maple smoke?” 

“ _ Obviously _ we are going to fill it with maple smoke,” Megamind replies, and he darts away, the cape already flowing just like it’s supposed to. “Now go, Minion! Off to the kitchen! I will greet Ms. Ritchi.” 

“And Cannon Dan, sir,” Minion says. 

Eugh. That deflates Megamind a little, his shoulders drooping. Right. He had to dial it back. “Yes, and  _ Cannon Dan _ , too.” 

“Oh, don’t be like that, sir,” Minion says, passing him by as he starts for the kitchen. The brainbots that had been in Megamind’s room come floating out after, bowging gently as they go, and Megamind scowls after them. 

“I’ll be however I like!” He says after Minion’s retreating back, and Minion takes just enough time to spin around in his dome, giving Megamind the  _ please-sir- _ try _ -to-behave _ look. 

He gets that look a lot where Roxanne Ritchi is concerned. 

But there’s no time to think about that now! Minion will get the kitchen warmed up, construction of the citadel will begin shortly, and then he’ll finally make a spectacle worth her attention. 

And probably waffles for Dan, too. 


	4. flash point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Dan really doesn't know what's going on. Neither does poor Roxanne. That's okay. I'm sure everyone will figure it out in the end. 
> 
> You guys, I love you so much, I reread your reviews all the time and they make my heart glow like an overexcited anglerfish. Thank you for supporting whatever it is that I am doing.

It’s a very nice Sunday. The skies are mostly clear, only a handful of puffball clouds high over the lake. Every park that the cab passes is chock full of families, some fresh out of church, some setting up for picnics. There’s a group of people flying big, gorgeously intricate kites in one of the parks, and Roxanne watches them as she goes by, technicolor dragons flirting with indigo moths and fiery red birds. 

And then they get to the industrial district.

The Lair isn’t exactly in a bad neighborhood. It’s not in a good neighborhood, either. Mostly the area around the Lair is empty. The building that had become home to the Lair was out on a sort of peninsula jutting into the lake, and it still had bits and pieces left over from when it had been a power station. Actually, now that she thought about it, it was mildly nuts that there were still transformers and that the Lair hadn’t been more… well, decommissioned before it had been changed into a restaurant. 

The parking lot is massive, and the cabbie glances back at her over her shoulder before his gaze darts back to the Lair. “Uh… you want me to drop you off out front?” 

“Yeah,” Roxanne says, her eyes snapping straight to the old rust red VW beetle trundling to the closest spot to the entrance. It was the only car here, and she’d bet money she knows who’s inside. “That’d be great.” 

“All right,” the cabbie says, reluctance clear in his tone, but he pulls up to the front anyways. 

She pays in cash, shoving rumpled notes at the cabbie before she gets out of the car. She’s saving her credit card for whatever the price tag for the Lair’s brunch is going to be - this is one she’s not going to be able to write off for work. It’s all on her. Which, she realizes as she stares up at the Lair, is absolutely nuts. She’s at the Lair on her day off,  _ on purpose _ , and the only person to blame is herself. 

And Kyle. Stupid Kyle. 

The slam of a car door startles her out of her thoughts, and when she looks to the VW bug, she’s not at all surprised to see Cannon Dan. He’s eyeing her like she might be the next new supervillain, brow knit behind the orange polycarb face shield - and that’s what gets her, really, makes her stare back. 

Dan’s regular superhero outfit is classic; it had been your regular skintight spandex, all done in oranges and yellows and reds, flame decals down the arms and legs and supplemented with sewn in armored plates. Not that he needed them. The reason that Cannon Dan had been the one on the front lines protecting Metro City for so long was that the guy was very nearly invincible - even his name was indicative of that fact, considering one of his first fights had ended when he’d literally launched himself out of a cannon to destroy a villain’s ill thought out Terror Blimp. The helmet and the polycarbonate face shield had mostly been for show, but he’d worn it all the same and he was wearing it now. But instead of the rest of his suit, Dan was in an ancient hoodie that had a faded dolphin giving a thumbs up and khaki shorts. It was…. _ weird _ , disconcerting to see him outside of his usual getup. 

“You here for the Lair?” He calls across the parking lot. 

“Yeah,” Roxanne says, giving herself a little shake. Superhero in costume or out of costume, it didn’t matter. “Hi, I’m Roxanne Ritchi.” 

“The food girl?” Suddenly Dan looks a little bit more suspicious, glancing around the parking lot like he’s expecting a camera crew to jump out from behind a lamppost. “You doing a report?” 

She forces her broadcast smile. “No, not today. Somebody told me that the Lair does brunch on Sundays, and I figured I should do a little reconnaissance. What brings you here?” 

Cannon Dan gives her another studying look, his lips screwing up into something that’s not quite a frown. He stuffs his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Ah… I come here every other Sunday.”

“Is there anything you’d recommend?” Roxanne asks. 

Dan’s frown deepens a little. “Look, is this on record? ‘Cuz I don’t give interviews anymore. I mean, I’ll talk if it’s just talk, but, y’know. Reporters and all.” 

Roxanne has to fight not to arch an eyebrow at that. At least he’s straightforward. “Off the record, I promise. Nothing today is going to be featured in any kind of report.” 

After a moment, Dan sighs and nods. “Yeah, okay,” he mutters, and he jerks his head towards the Lair, indicating she should follow. He mutters the next part, but she’s not so far away that she doesn’t hear it. “Guess the Waynes wouldn’t keep you around if you couldn’t keep your mouth shut when it mattered.” 

That makes her stand up a little straighter, glaring at the back of Cannon Dan’s head.  _ Keep her mouth shut _ , like the Waynes could pay her to hide a story. If there was a scandal in Metro Man’s kitchen, it wasn’t like she’d keep it quiet! It’s almost enough to make her want to renege on her promise that she won’t report on anything today.

Like he has no idea what he’d said was offensive, Cannon Dan keeps on talking. “Look, I’ll be honest, I almost never see the kid on Sundays anymore. it’s mostly just Minion manning the kitchen, and pretty much anything Minion makes is worth eating. Just tell ‘im what you’re in the mood for and you’ll be fine.” 

“Wait - so it’s not a fixed menu?” Roxanne asks, instead of repeating  _ the kid? _ out loud. Somebody calling Megamind, of all people,  _ the kid _ is just… disorienting. Again she gives herself an internal shake. She lives in a city with two aliens and a resident superhero, her normal is already very skewed. There’s absolutely no reason that having a casual chat with Metro City’s local superhero should leave her feeling this out of it. 

“Nope,” Dan says, pausing in front of the front doors. They had to have been made custom for the Lair; they didn’t match the rest of the architecture, big and black with frosted blue windows and wrought iron spikes decorating every point that wouldn’t interfere with the door functioning as a door. “Honestly, I’m pretty sure people think this place is closed on Sundays.” 

He reaches a hand out, resting on the door handle. He’s about to push it open, but before he can the option is torn away from him. Literally. The doors both fly backwards, and low-hanging fog spills from within the open doorway. The distant strains of Ozzy Osbourne’s  _ Breaking All The Rules _ comes flowing out, and, of course, only a moment later like a flash of leather-and-spandex-clad lightning, out pops Megamind. 

“Ah!” He exclaims, spreading his arms in a grand gesture that’s only a  _ little _ rehearsed. Roxanne has to admit, the cape he’s wearing this time has an impressively high collar. The points are tipped with faux fangs, and it’s all too eager to billow dramatically behind him. “Roxanne Ritchi, weclome, welcome! And you too, Dan. Come to savor the  _ sinfully  _ delicious culinary offerings of the Lair, have you?” 

“Uh,” Cannon Dan says, hand still extended for the long-gone doorknob. He glances sidelong at Roxanne, something small changing in his expression, and Roxanne realizes a few things at once, puzzle pieces clicking into place. 

One, no matter what Dan said, they were  _ absolutely _ in for the Lair experience. 

Two? 

The Lair experience was  _ not _ universal. 

But, being as Cannon Dan seemed to be shocked to silence, it falls to Roxanne to respond. It’s  _ extremely _ easy to slip back into her work persona - including the attitude that went with it. Honestly, she’s already smirking at the sheer  _ drama _ of it all. “I mean, yes. It  _ is _ still a restaurant, right? Not harboring any death rays in your kitchen?”

“Oh, wouldn’t  _ you _ like to know!” Megamind says, folding his arms behind his back and striding with slow, purposeful steps around her. It’s a thing he does. He likes to circle people, which drives her nuts, because it always throws off the camera guys. But this time halfway around the circle he jerks to a stop, and it takes her a moment to realize that it’s because Megamind has locked eyes with Cannon Dan. The transformation is fascinating, the way the theatrics drain out of Megamind for just a second, his shoulders slumping. “That is,  _ no death rays,  _ absolutely none.” 

He shakes it off relatively quickly, though, waving his hands to the door. “Anyways! Inside, inside!” 

“Hm,” Cannon Dan says, as Megamind darts around Roxanne and back into the building. He turns to follow Megamind in, and Roxanne goes too, her brain firing a little bit too fast with all the information it had just been fed. 

She was back to thinking she’d been right the first time - this was just  _ weird _ . 

The Lair’s dining room was always in a state of flux. Some days it was like a normal restaurant, albeit with decor that beeped and glowed and sometimes shot off bolts of electricity. Sometimes new food delivery mechanisms were hung from the ceiling. Roxanne didn’t have to cover the pudding troughs - that had been, fortunately, before her time - but she  _ had _ been there for the liquid nitrogen happy hour, the corn cob hot dog deep fry, and the grow-your-own-meat kits, which had all turned out about as well as one could expect. 

Today it was largely empty, the tesla coils in the corners of the room turned off, chairs and tables shoved against the wall save for one that seemed to have hastily been placed in the center of the room. The tablecloth was lopsided, and she artfully pretended not to notice as Megamind leapt across the room to right it. 

“Well, this’ll be interesting,” Dan mutters, moving to take a seat at the table. 

Megamind is practically bouncing on his heels, waiting for her to take her seat. She lets out a little sigh and moves to the table. 

“Where are all the robots?” She asks, and yes, she uses the wrong term just to annoy him. It works, a frustrated look flickering across Megamind’s face for just a moment. 

“ _ Brainbots, _ Ms. Ritchi, I’ve told you a hundred times,” he says, and predictably, he’s circling the table again. He’s winding himself up, and despite herself she’s smirking a little. “They are helping Minion in the kitchen. I have something  _ special _ for you, since you decided to drop in unannounced.” 

“The Lair doesn’t take reservations,” Roxanne counters, “I’ll  _ always _ be unannounced.” She almost says something about the one brainbot kidnapping, the words on the tip of her tongue -  _ unless you send your chauffeur to kidnap me again _ \- but there’s something about the way that Megamind had completely deflated earlier when he’d glanced at Cannon Dan that keeps her from saying it aloud. 

And, speak of the devil. 

“Minion takes reservations,” Cannon Dan interjects. 

It puts a hard stop their banter, and Roxanne and Megamind both glance to him. 

“That was one time,” Megamind says, breaking the awkward silence. “And he stopped  _ months _ ago. Really, Dan, get with the program.” 

“I’m just saying,” Dan says with a little shrug. “Now, kid, am  _ I  _ included in this special….thing?” 

“ _ No, _ ” Megamind says, with a groaning, frustrated tone that almost sounds like a put-upon teenager’s. Again, his shoulders slump and the dramatic flair fades. “You are  _ not _ included.” 

“Hm.” It’s all Dan says, his eyes narrowing a little as he looks at Megamind, then at Roxanne, and back again. It sends a prickling feeling down Roxanne’s spine; she knows she’s missing something, she can see the wheels turning in Dan’s head. She just doesn’t know what he’s thinking. It’s going to drive her insane. 

“ _ Hm,”  _ Megamind repeats, almost mocking in tone. He sucks in a breath and rolls his eyes, squaring his narrow shoulders. “Fine. I will be in the kitchen, perfecting my masterpiece of culinary genius.”

He turns, sweeping away with a melodramatic  _ swoosh _ of his cape. When he opens the door to the kitchen, two brainbots come out, flitting over his massive head. They’re dressed up; one has a little paper cap reminiscent of a 50’s diner waitress and its claw…hook...arms are clutching two mugs, the other has a teeny tiny apron tied around its body and a carafe filled with coffee. Roxanne watches them hover over, bowging gently as they go. Usually they’re outfit-free, unless Megamind is trying to be extra fancy. The spikes and the eyestalks and the claws suit the usual decor fine. She wonders who’s in charge of the costume change. Probably Minion. 

As the brainbots swirl around them, setting the table and pouring coffee, Cannon Dan shifts in his seat, giving a longer, sterner sounding  _ hmmm.  _

“Well, seems pretty typical to me,” Roxanne says, nodding her thanks at the brainbot as it pours her coffee. She’s never been sure if they’re actually intelligent or just very good at acting that way, but she’s always treated the brainbots like they’re sentient in the same way that she got used to anthropomorphizing her mom’s roomba. 

“This is  _ not _ normal for a Sunday,” Dan mutters, taking a drink from his mug. It’s still steaming hot, but maybe nigh invincibility made drinking boiling beverages easier. Roxanne waits, and a moment later one of the brainbots returns to the table with cream and sugar - she starts doctoring her coffee as Dan bolts down his and gets a refill. “Wonder if Minion isn’t a hundred percent today.” 

“Can Minion get sick?” Roxanne asks. The idea is a little distressing. It’s hard enough when aliens get sick - she’s seen Wayne with his version of a cold, and when a sneeze can knock you through half a building it was downright dangerous - but when you’re sick  _ and _ not a mammal? What do you do, go to an exotic vet and hope they’ll listen? 

Dan shrugs. “I’m no expert, but I figure it’s possible. If it was serious, though, I don’t think the kid would be as full of bluster as he is.” 

They fall into silence, after that. Roxanne glances at the door to the kitchen, and the brainbots - the two that had served them coffee are hovering just next to the kitchen door, their arms limp, the red glow of their eyes steady. There’s mechanical sounds from the kitchen, audible under the ambient music, but there always are at the lair. For a moment she considers standing up and wandering over, pushing open the door to glance inside and spy on whatever Megamind is working on, but she knows the brainbots will alert him as soon as she’s on her feet. 

“So,” Dan says, drawing the word out. The longer he does the more she can hear how uncomfortable he is, and as soon as he says it he trails off into nothing. 

She decides to rescue him, offering a bemused smile. “Not so good at conversation, huh?” 

“Erh. No.” Dan stares at the table, tapping his fingers on the edge, and she had the feeling if the brainbots had left forks and knives he’d be rearranging them. “Kinda lost the touch. I don’t talk to normal people so much anymore. Girlfriend says I can’t talk my way out of a paper bag.” As soon as he says it, he grimaces, glancing up at her through the orange polycarb lens. “We’re still off record, right?” 

“Of course,” Roxanne says, stifling her surprise. Cannon Dan, with a girlfriend? No wonder he wasn’t a big fan of interviews. She had a hard enough time with people thinking she was dating Wayne - her own company hadn’t done any gossip pages on it despite Kyle trying to get the story, but she’d had to wave off the tabloid people more than once. “You have a girlfriend? Have you been seeing each other long?” 

“Long enough,” Dan says, and it’s like he’s trying to look anywhere but at her. “She’s not a fan of the limelight, and I figured, all right, I’ll just keep refusing interviews. Keeps her out of it.” 

That brings a little smile to Roxanne’s face. “That’s sweet of you.” 

“Yeah,” Dan mutters, reaching for his coffee like it’s a lifeline. “Thanks.” 

Roxanne nearly asks more - she wants to  _ know _ \- but before she can there’s a  _ bang _ and some shouting from the kitchen. It’s not so out of the ordinary that she jumps, but it draws her attention, and the brainbots have craned their eyestalks around to glance at the door. Dan sighs. 

“Well,” he grumbles, “Whatever it is, it’ll be memorable.” 

“It always is,” Roxanne says with a smile. 

That being said, they have to wait another twenty minutes. Twenty awful, stilted minutes. At least the brainbots are attentive with regards to the refills. She tries to get the conversation going a few times, but Dan always lets it putter out. He grumbles a couple times about how long it’s taking, which really only hammers home how different his experience is to most people’s. Twenty minutes of wait time at the Lair is pretty good. 

The silence, at least, gives her a little more time to think about things. To ponder the interactions she’d seen, the way that Megamind kept losing his animation whenever Dan was involved. She almost wishes she had a notebook to jot observations down in - she has to settle for her phone, feeling rude even though Dan doesn’t seem to even be paying attention. 

It’s not completely outlandish. Yes, Megamind owns a restaurant, but it’s pretty clear that he toes the supervillain border sometimes. She knows that more than anyone, unless there’s other food reporters he’s tried to kidnap recently. Even Wayne had commented on it, especially after the food fair incident. “I don’t know!” he’d said, when she’d asked him why he’d flown in and yanked her away, “I thought maybe the little guy had finally cracked!” 

That lends a little bit more of a sinister edge to it, these Sunday brunches. Are they fueled by camaraderie? Or was Dan checking in to keep Megamind in line, a constant reminder that there was a superhero always on the lookout? 

One thing was for sure, Dan wasn’t going to be the one to give her answers. 

She makes a note to herself. Wayne wasn’t exactly the best at… well, a lot of things, including following through on promises, but he was the only other superpowered person that she knew. Maybe he’d have some ideas. 

It’s the last thing she types before the doors to the kitchen burst open and a sea of brainbots comes pouring out, many of them hooked to what looks like it had once been a rolling cart but now was dressed up as a roman chariot. She has a moment where she has to blink, staring at the monstrosity before her, barely even aware of Megamind when he leaps from behind it. 

It’s….she doesn’t even know how to  _ describe _ it, because she barely know how it’s  _ food _ . It looks like a castle, sort of, a grand tower that’s probably about as tall as she is if it had been set on the ground. There are sausage links embedded in some kind of batter that’s been layered to create walls. It is multiple stories tall, and each level seemed to have a theme. There’s what looks like egg yolks mimicking stony textures on one level; the next has a room that has to be made of stained sugar glass, the leading keeping the glass shards together looking to be some kind of moulded chocolate. It has  _ windows _ , slot windows that are spilling some kind of smoke like the whole thing is filled with fire, and there are crenellations at the top, some kind of amber sauce seeping down between them. She has to crane her neck to look up at it. How the hell it had even made it through the kitchen doors was a mystery. 

“Behold, the  _ breakfast citadel!”  _ Megamind crows. Roxanne doesn’t really respond, though she’s dimly aware of Minion slipping around the other side of the citadel with a plate of very regular-looking waffles with chopped up bananas and walnuts on top. It really doesn’t matter, either, because Megamind snaps his fingers and one of the brainbots bowgs, snapping out a lighter. 

The lighter touches the amber goo seeping out of the crenellations, and like the magnificent disaster it was, the entire thing goes up in flames. 

For a moment, it’s impressive. Kind of breathtaking, like a castle under siege. It reminds her of the completely over-the-top foods they used to serve to royalty, things made into ridiculous shapes, as opulent as they could manage. With some abstract part of her brain, she’s really thankful, on that subject, that Megamind has never tried to serve roast peacock. 

Then the dough begins to smoulder, and a thread of the flaming sauce slithers down to the smoke spilling out of the slot windows. Roxanne scoots back in her chair, almost by rote, and as she does Megamind glances back at his creation, and his eyes go wide. She knows that expression. It’s the look he gets when he realizes that something is off. 

She doesn’t really understand  _ why _ the breakfast citadel explodes, but she does see the flaming sauce hit the smoke, and she sees the smoke flash. It ignites, and it sucks back into the void it came from, and not even a second later with flaming ferocity that chamber of the citadel  _ bursts _ . 

She hears Megamind yelp, and Minion shout “oh  _ no,  _ sir!”, and as she’s pelted with smoldering bits of citadel the brainbots that aren’t knocked silly jerk up. 

_ “Fire,”  _ they say, the brainbots rising like a tide, and the fire extinguisher extension pops out of their cases as they do, claws bared. “ _ Fire _ ,  _ fire.”  _ It’s the last coherent word, and it’s overwhelmed by the  _ hsss _ of the fire extinguishing foam as it douses the citadel, the chariot, and the brainbots still attached to the thing. 

Roxanne swats the flaming bits of pancake batter off of her shoulders, patting herself down as she does. It’s not the first time that some mad scientist food of Megamind’s has exploded in her face, but that doesn’t mean her heart is pounding any less. Explosions in your  _ face _ were always disconcerting, and she wants to make sure none of her hair’s on fire. Minion is standing, spinning in his dome and covered in breakfast goo; it’s dripping from his suit’s fur. Megamind is on the floor somewhere, gasping and cursing as a brainbot puts out the flaming sauce that had landed on his cape. Dan is staring, thoroughly unimpressed, at the mess. 

He sighs, after a moment, and he pushes his plate of waffles across the table as Megamind swats the bot that’s been spraying him out of the air. 

“Here,” Dan grumbles. “Since your breakfast exploded.” 

“Thanks,” Roxanne says, sucking in a deep breath and trying to quiet the pounding of her heart. 

  
It was a good thing she wasn’t reviewing this. If she was, she  _ really _ couldn’t recommend the Lair’s Sunday brunch to anyone. 


	5. Death rays

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy this year keeps coming and it just keeps coming. I love you guys. I hope you’re keeping safe.

That. Was humiliating. 

Once he manages to dust himself off - well,  _ dust _ isn’t exactly the word, considering how much fire retardant foam he’d been doused in - he vanishes into the kitchen with some excuse he barely even remembers once it’s out of his mouth. He couldn’t do it. It was bad enough getting the look from Roxanne - yes, he was used to it, but being used to it didn’t mean he enjoyed it! 

What was exponentially worse was the look he got from Dan. It was the talking-to look. As in, he was going to get a talking-to as soon as Roxanne was out of earshot. Or, if he wasn’t lucky, when she was still _in earshot_ , and that would be….well, _exponentially_ _worse_. 

Of course. Of course he should have thought much harder about the smoke’s ignition point and that with the fire and the heat and the enclosed walls of pastry--well, too late. He’d mark it down as something to improve the next time he made the breakfast citadel -  _ if _ he ever tried to make it again. 

The kitchen, with all its whirring machinery and sanitized surfaces, is much more comforting. He throws himself towards the dough printer, hulking in the corner, and he jams in the dimensions for it to print more regular sized, regular shaped waffles. He hadn’t missed when Dan had slid his plate over to Roxanne, and  _ that _ was humiliating, too. Not only was his food a failure, but a failure that didn’t even end in anything edible! 

The doors to the kitchen swing open behind him, and Megamind tenses, half-ready for Dan, or worse, Roxanne. But as the door shuts and a few brainbots flit back in the kitchen to their posts, the hardly-noticeable clank of Minion’s suit sets him at ease. 

“Sir?”

“It’s fine,” Megamind says, even though it is just another in a long line of embarrassing,  _ humiliating _ failures. “It’s fine! Look, I’m even printing more  _ waffles _ .” He spreads his hands towards the printhead as it spits out more dough onto the bed, nozzle working restlessly. He even almost manages to say the word  _ waffles _ without the derision it deserves. 

Minion flicks his fins nervously. “Yes, but, your cape--” 

“ _ It’s fine,”  _ Megamind says, more of a growl this time, and that reminds him. He grabs the sodden edge of the cape and yanks it off, the breakaway snaps making it easy. There’s holes burnt into it and it’s covered in chunks of foam. He tries to shake it off first with a hefty wave, but the clumps stay firmly glued to the fabric and he dumps it on the floor. Two of the nearest brainbots slip by, gathering the cloak and absconding with it. “We will just never, ever,  _ ever _ wing it again. Is it possible to track her? Make sure she never appears by surprise. Of course, there will be the privacy issues, and the issue of ‘stalking’,” he makes the air quotes with his fingers, “but there has to be a non-invasive way.” 

“A non-invasive way to track someone’s movements?” Minion repeats, brow ridges lowering. Honestly, for a fish, he was  _ so _ expressive. 

Megamind throws his hands in the air. “I’m just spitballing! Work with me here!” 

He doesn’t get a chance to say much more. The kitchen door creaks open once again, and this time Megamind does actually look at the door, and he goes stiff. Oh, evil gods. 

Of course, it couldn’t just be one or the other. Oh, no. It had to be Dan  _ and _ Roxanne. Of  _ course _ it would be.

“Aaah-uh-uh, nothing to see here!” Megamind flaps his hands, ducking around Minion and rushing forward. As though shooing would actually make Dan leave. “Go on, staff only in the kitchen--” 

“Since when?” Dan asks, a brow twisting, and Roxanne gives him a look that Dan can’t see but Megamind can; it’s the look that means she’s putting things together, that precious brain of hers firing off and making  _ connections _ . Everything is very bad. 

“ _ Since always please leave,”  _ Megamind says, getting just a little more frantic when Roxanne turns that thoughtful, inquisitive look to  _ him _ . Oh, evil gods, she was trying to figure something out. But then she looked past him, and her eyes went wide, a flicker of wonder crossing her face as she stepped around Dan. 

“Is that a 3D food printer?” She asks, leaning to watch the printhead as it spat out more dough. 

“Yes!” Minion chirps, just as Megamind swings out his arms, like the flailing will block her view. 

“ _ No!”  _ He says. And, really, he doesn’t need to be this defensive. People outside of his kitchen had already done 3D printed food. The technique isn’t a trade secret, but his machine is. After buying a handful of culinary-grade 3D printers, he’d gotten tired of the limitations and made his own; it gets  _ boring _ if all you can do is purees and doughs.

She looks at him, and she  _ smirks _ . “You’re acting like I’ve never been in the kitchen before. Come on, one peek - it can’t be as bad as the flash freezer.” 

Ah, the flash freezer incident, the reason he’d tried to keep her out of the kitchen ever since. The personnel-only rule had been specifically put in place to keep people from catching him in (more) compromising positions. It takes everything to keep from groaning, and she is still smirking, and it’s driving him insane. Why must she smirk? She’s treating this like--like  _ normal _ , suddenly, and that’s unnerving too. Is it pity? No! There is supposed to be a way that these things go, and it is  _ not _ going the way that it should, and it is  _ very distressing _ . 

“The flash freezer was a perfectly good idea!” He snaps back, because even with everything, it  _ had _ been. The mouth of the supercooling array had just been… well, not OSHA-approved. To say the least. 

“Oh, it was great,” she says, that infernal smirk still on her face, “if you want to wow people by freezing their clothes instantly.” 

She is doing this  _ on purpose.  _ Infuriating and wonderful and  _ not _ what he needs just after that disaster, in front of the superhero he’s both sort of idolized and certainly been annoyed by for the majority of his life. The superhero that’s watching them  _ right now.  _ “Now see here, Ms. Ritchi—“ 

The start of his rant is interrupted by the  _ ding _ of the printer finishing its first waffle. Minion flicks his fins, grinning wide and wavering his suit fingers. 

“I’ve got it!” 

“Thank you, Minion,” Megamind says by rote, but in that moment of distraction Roxanne slips by to get a closer look at the printer. He very pointedly does not notice that she smells good. Nope. That’s not a thing he’s going to think about. 

And of course Dan lurks closer, his hands shoved into his pockets. He’s not looking at the 3D printer. Oh, no. He’s staring right at Megamind with his eyebrows stuck in a flat unamused line, one Megamind recognizes; he hasn’t seen  _ this _ much unamused eyebrow since he’d first created the invisible food truck. 

“What the hell was that?” Dan asks, his voice pitched low. Still, not low enough. 

Megamind hisses, glancing back at Roxanne. If she heard she gave no indication of it. No, thank everything unholy, she was focused on Minion, who was chattering away as he swiped the waffle onto a plate and cleared off the print bed in preparation for the next print. 

“Nothing!” He growls, and he darts a little further away, closer to the dining room door. Dan follows with slow steps, the unamused eyebrows firmly in place. “Just an experiment. I  _ always  _ experiment on Sundays, you know.” 

“Have you been talking to the warden?” Dan asks. Nannying. He’s always nannying. “keeping in touch?” 

“Pah!” Megamind waves a hand, then crosses his arms tight. This obsession of Dan’s will be the thing that really  _ does _ tip Megamind over into supervillainy. “Please! I keep up with my regular check-in’s. You really don’t have to keep prodding like this.”

“Hm,” Dan grunts. The  _ I have far too many thoughts on this and I’m going to meddle _ grunt. “So Wilson isn’t calling either?” 

“We are not family,” Megamind grinds out. “I believe the warden has made that  _ extremely  _ clear.” The warden hasn’t even been to his restaurant since the first time the doors had opened. His prison uncles had made it more often, and that was saying something, considering a number of them were lifers. Uncle Benoît had even managed to stop by on his last escape attempt. 

“I just think,” Dan starts, “if you’re starting to fixate on your school rival’s girlfriend—“

“It has an ice cream mode?!” Roxanne exclaims, unexpectedly excited, and Megamind flinches. 

“I am not  _ fixated,”  _ he says, fighting the urge to abandon Dan and leap back over to distract Minion and, by extension, Roxanne. That precious fish is going to explain every single submenu to her. “I can stop whenever I want—“

“Ha!” That finally jerks Dan’s eyebrows out of their disapproving line. “‘Stop whenever you want,’ you admit it!” 

“I admit nothing!” Megamind hisses back. 

“Come on, kid, be real,” Dan says, and it’s back to the serious face. “You built the girl a breakfast castle. Are you thinking of building anything else? Anything bigger?” Dan's voice drops an octave, like they’re talking about some kind of conspiracy. “Any thoughts of kidnapping?” 

“No!” Megamind says, and he  _ knows _ he says it too quick, because he absolutely had, multiple times. The brainbot soft kidnapping had been as far as it ever went, but there were so many times when he needed a taste tester, and his tastes are similar to human tastes but not always similar enough, especially on the bitter end of the spectrum, and it would be  _ so easy  _ if Roxanne could just say what flavor was missing or too much or not intense enough. Benign kidnappings! All benign! 

Dan’s got the suspicious gleam in his eye, and he leans in. “You’re not thinking about death rays again, are you? I see you’re still packin’ the de-gun...”

It is hard not to immediately slap a hand to the de-gun. It stays with him almost always; you never know when something might need to be dehydrated, destroyed, or decoupaged. But that’s overshadowed when he processes the words  _ death ray. _

The damn stupid death rays. As soon as Roxanne had joked about it, Megamind  _ knew  _ Dan would bring it up. He  _ knew it _ . It takes all his willpower not to claw his own eyes out. He settles for the most intense eye roll he can manage, flailing his arms and clawing his fingers. His gloves squeak in protest. “I haven’t built a death ray since I was in high school and you know it!” 

“Come on, boys, if you’re going to keep muttering in the corner you should share with the class.” Roxanne’s voice cuts through the conversation, and Megamind whips around only to find her leaning against the counter, smirking -  _ again - _ with Minion hovering over her shoulder. 

He can’t help the dull glower he sends Minion’s way, suddenly wishing that Minion  _ had _ been explaining every odd little tic in the printer’s programming, but Minion shrugs - both a flip of his fins and a hunch of his suit’s shoulders - as though he’s saying  _ sorry, I tried, she got distracted _ . 

“It’s nothing,” Dan says, and the absolute last thing that Megamind expects is the clap of a hand on his shoulder. He nearly jumps out of his boots. “Just catchin’ up with the kid. I got a question about some inventing stuff s’all.” 

The way that Roxanne’s eyebrow ticks up, it’s practically screaming that she doesn’t believe a word that Dan is saying. But she doesn't question it, and neither does Dan, and Megamind does not ponder the fact that maybe he’s been studying her expressions a little  _ too  _ closely over the years. No, that’s probably just Dan’s meddling. Trying the psychology. Well, it won’t work, not on him. 

“Well, we’re printing more waffles,” Roxanne says, turning back to the hulking beast of a printer. “Ask your question quick and then figure out your flavor profile. There’s so many modes on this thing, you can do whatever you want.” 

Megamind jerks out from underneath Dan’s hand, and he ignores the man’s sigh. “Minion! You can’t just  _ explain _ the  _ settings  _ \- she’s using her reporter wiles on your feeble fish brain!” 

Roxanne rolls her eyes as Minion gasps, and it’s a distraction. A good enough distraction. The Dan thing is crawling in the back of his mind, and he knows as soon as Roxanne is out of the building Dan is going to keep interrogating him. 

But at least, for now, it wasn’t going to happen in front of Roxanne. So his humiliation wouldn’t be at a  _ complete _ all time high. 

Now all he has to do is keep her from learning every single mode on the printer. The last thing he needs is her running off and telling the Scotts after all of this is done. 


End file.
